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A problem which is of particular significance to us in our work with children in placement is the effect on the child's superego development, resulting from the experience of separation from the parents. Our observations indicate the extraordinary readiness of the child to interpret the experience of separation as an expression of hostility on the part of the parent, and to assume that this action was justified by the child's wrongdoing. The child identifies with the hostile rejecting parent, an example of identification with the aggressor, accepts the fantasy of a crime that deserves punishment, and assumes the guilt which such an act requires. There is, in fact, a close similarity between the mourning reaction described by Freud (1917); (1921, p. 109), and the reaction of the child who has been sent away to be placed by a living parent. The child in almost every instance blames himself for the separation. These findings are in accord with
the observations of Jacobson (1946) on the effect of disappointment in the parents on superego formation.